‘Cargo’ gala premiere set for December 8

Best Ever Film Ltd. in partnership with Artistic Soul Productions Studio (ASPS) announced the Freeport Gala Premiere of Cargo which they called the largest Bahamian film project ever.

The Cargo Gala Premiere in Freeport is open to the public and will be held on Friday, December 8, 2017 at A Social Affair Convention Center.

Aryana Joy Roberts, Founder of Artistic Soul Productions made the premiere announcement on Tuesday, November 21.

Written and directed by acclaimed Bahamian filmmaker Kareem J. Mortimer, this action filled human drama, inspired by true events, tells the story of Kevin, a Bahamian fisherman with a gambling addiction in Nassau, who takes a job smuggling Haitians to Florida in a desperate ploy to support his family.

Cargo, produced by Bahamian production company Best Ever Film Ltd., has already won a Bahamian Icon Award and the Amnesty International Human Rights Award at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.
The film stars Warren Brown, Gessica Geneus, Omar J. Dorsey, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Persia White and Sky Nicole Gray.

Kareem J. Mortimer, award-winning Bahamian filmmaker, noted that Cargo is the culmination of seven years of raising money, writing, researching and looking within to make a work of art that Bahamians can ultimately be proud of.

The film is a feature length version of Mortimer’s award-winning short film Passage, which was released in 2012 and won 10 awards, including an African Movie Academy Award and a Bahamian Icon Award.
“In 2013 I received an offer of $1 million to produce Cargo, with the caveat that the film be produced in Puerto Rico,” Mortimer revealed. “With no subsidies for the local film industry, producing Cargo in The Bahamas meant much higher production costs. Despite the higher costs, we made the very important decision to shoot Cargo exclusively in The Bahamas.“This is a Bahamian film and we were resolute in producing it here, in The Bahamas, the place we call home, the place that inspired this film,” said Mortimer.

More than 80 Bahamians worked on the film, serving as the heads of major departments, including Locations, Production Design, Catering and Hair and Make-Up.

Cargo stars talented Bahamian actors as well as established and recognizable British, American, Jamaican and Haitian actors.

Cargo is not only vital to the nation’s filmmaking and arts community, but to the budding of the same, here in Grand Bahama. Grand Bahama has been sanctioned as the Film Capital of The Bahamas by the present government, and the premiere of this indigenous film - written, directed, and starring our own - is a step in the right direction to seeing that mandate through.”

Mortimer is also a video artist, whose work has been distributed in more than 40 countries. Over his career, he has won more than 30 awards for his projects. His work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Variety, IndieWire and The Hollywood Reporter.

Cargo has screened to sold-out audiences in Nassau and Miami. The Cargo trailer, which went viral and received more than 4,000 shares in just a few days, can be viewed online and tickets to the premiere can be purchased at www.cargopremiere.com. Tickets are also available The Seventeen Shop.